The Internet’s Directory Assistance —  Widely trusted, but sadly not trustworthy.

The Domain Name System or DNS was created in 1983, a much more simple and trusting period in computing, to serve as directory assistance between a website domain name (www.yourname.com, for example) and an IP address. Flash-forward to the present, when cyber fraud, attacks and crime are all on the rise, and this trust has eroded considerably.

Many high-profile companies like CheckFree, Comcast, Baidu, Twitter, and even the international oversight body for domain names itself, ICANN, have become victims of DNS hijacking within the past few years. When this occurs, cyber criminals redirect a domain to a fraudulent Internet host. By hijacking an enterprise’s DNS, hackers can gain access to everything stored and shared within an organization: vital data like financial and customer information, passwords, emails and IMs proprietary documents and more. And these attacks affect more than just domains on the Web – they can impact all traffic and transactions throughout an entire extended enterprise.

In the CheckFree hijacking, hackers redirected CheckFree customers to a web address that installed malicious software (malware) during the electronic bill pay process. CheckFree’s 24 million customers were at serious risk. The hackers could have used their malware not just to access CheckFree users’ vital data, but also to swindle information from the financial industry’s hundreds of transaction partners. By exploiting connections through all levels of an extended enterprise, cyber criminals continually gain access to the core transactions that facilitate business.

IID’s internal team of experts, industry-leading proprietary systems, and vast network of industry relationships combine to ensure that these extended enterprise communication channels are being monitored – and threats mitigated. By doing this, IID secures an organization’s Internet presence and authenticates connections. To find out more about IID’s solution, ActiveTrust™ DNS click here.